WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that under President Donald Trump's leadership, America prevented and ended a war between India and Pakistan.
"Just going through a list here Mr President and all these achievements that have happened domestically.
Under your leadership, we've prevented and ended a war between India and Pakistan," Rubio said, sitting next to Trump, during remarks at a Cabinet meeting at the White House Tuesday.
Rubio also listed the peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, "a 12-day war that ended with an American operation that we're the only country in the world that could have done, hopefully pretty soon a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia.'
"The entire Middle East and the infrastructure of it has the potential now to change because of Syria and Lebanon. And it hasn't even been 6 months. It's a great testament to your leadership and the team, " he said.
A day earlier, Trump had again repeated the claim that he stopped the war, that could have gone nuclear, between India and Pakistan by telling the two neighbours that Washington will not do trade with them if they continued the fighting.
"We did a job with India and Pakistan, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda and the Congo, and this was all over the last three weeks or so and others that were ready to fight," Trump had said while speaking to reporters ahead of a bilateral dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House Monday.
"And we stopped a lot of fights. I think the very big one, frankly, a very, very big one was India and Pakistan. And we stopped that over trade. We're dealing with India. We're dealing with Pakistan," Trump had said.
"We said we're not going to be dealing with you at all if you're going to fight. And they were maybe at a nuclear stage. They're both nuclear powers. And I think stopping that was very important," he had said.